Numerical simulation of breakup of a viscous drop in simple shear flow through a volume-of-fluid method

A spherical drop, placed in a second liquid of the same density, is subjected to shearing between parallel plates. The subsequent flow is investigated numerically with a volume-of-fluid (VOF) method. The scheme incorporates a semi-implicit Stokes solver to enable computations at low Reynolds number. Our simulations compare well with previous theoretical, numerical, and experimental results. For capillary numbers greater than the critical value, the drop deforms to a dumbbell shape and daughter drops detach via an end-pinching mechanism. The number of daughter drops increases with the capillary number. The breakup can also be initiated by increasing the Reynolds number. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S1070-6631(00)02002-X].